PRESS RELEASE

9 October 2006 is Overshoot Day: when one planet is not enough

New research reveals rising consumption of ecological resources is pushing the world into ever earlier ecological deficit

HALIFAX , NS – Calculations released today show that beginning October 9th and continuing through the end of the year, the world will be living beyond its ecological means – consuming more resources and producing more waste than the planet can support. Research by the US-based international non-profit, Global Footprint Network, in partnership with the New Economics Foundation, a UK-based independent research organisation, demonstrates that humanity has already consumed the total amount of new resources nature will produce this year.

Each year Global Footprint Net work calculates humanity's Ecological Footprint – the amount of productive land area, such as cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries, that it takes to meet current consumption levels – and compares it with global biocapacity, the ability of the world's ecosystems to generate resources and absorb wastes. This accounting is then used to determine the exact date we, as a global community, begin running our annual ecological deficit. Designated “Overshoot Day,” this year, demand begins outstripping supply on October 9th.

“The fact that we are living beyond the capacity of the planet to support us is the most serious challenge facing humanity today,” said Ronald Colman, Executive Director of Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Atlantic, a Global Footprint Network partner which has produced Ecological Footprint reports for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. “It is the ultimate cause of resource depletion, pollution, global warming, habitat destruction, species extinctions, and other threats,” says Colman. Indeed, if the whole world consumed at the same rate as Canadians do, Overshoot Day would be even earlier, around the end of March.”

Canada 's Ecological Footprint (the amount of bioproductive land we need annually to support our consumption patterns and lifestyles) is 7.7 global hectares per person, about 3½ times the 2003 world average Footprint of 2.2 global hectares, and about 4.3 times the available biocapacity of 1.8 global hectares per person. Canada 's per capita Footprint is one of the largest in the world. This means that if everyone in the world lived like Canadians, we would need more than three additional planets to provide the necessary resources and to absorb the wastes we produce.

Overshoot has been called ‘the biggest issue you've never heard of.' Yet despite its lack of publicity, overshoot's causes and effects are as simple as they are significant. In any given year, if humanity eats more food than is grown, we need to dip into our food reserves. If trees are cut down faster than they grow back, then forests become smaller than the year before. If more fish are caught each year than spawn, there will be fewer fish in the sea. If more greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere than can be absorbed, then the effects of climate change, such as melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather patterns, will worsen.

“Humanity is living off its ecological credit card and can only do this by liquidating the planet's ecological assets,” said Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director of Global Footprint Net work , “While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends.”

As humanity's consumption of resources increases, Overshoot Day creeps earlier on the calendar. According to Global Footprint Net work , humanity's first Overshoot Day was December 19, 1987. By 1995 it had jumped back a month to November 21st. This year it is October 9.

Overshoot Day provides a clear illustration that our current level of consumption is depleting the world's biological assets, which undermines humanity's future. This year, humanity's Ecological Footprint is almost thirty per cent larger than the planet's biocapacity. In other words, it now takes more than one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year.

Every year since the mid-1980s our ecological deficit has been contributing to an accumulating global ecological debt. Getting out of deb t and ending overshoot means bringing demand back within what the planet can supply.

“Because more than 70 per cent of the world's population lives modestly and within sustainable limits, the greatest responsibility for reducing our global ecological deficit lies with the rich countries (including Canada ) whose high levels of consumption are primarily responsible for overshoot,” says Colman. He notes that just 30% of the world's people currently account for 70% of the world's consumption, and just 20% consume 45% of all meat and fish; 58% of energy; 84% of paper; and 87% of vehicles, while the poorest 20% account for only 1.3% of global consumption.

Accounting tools like the Ecological Footprint, which compares our demand on, and nature's supply of ecological resources, can help us balance our ecological budget. We can accomplish this by reducing demand -- consuming fewer resources (like turning down our thermostats and driving less), increasing the efficiency of our resource and energy use, and curbing population growth; and by increasing and caring for supply -- protecting ecosystems and improving their net productivity. Taken together, such actions can help us both protect biodiversity and end overshoot.

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Notes to editors:

1. For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact:
   
   Local contact:
   Ronald Colman
   Executive Director, GPI Atlantic
   902-823-1944 (work)
   902-489-7007 (cell)
   colman@gpiatlantic.org
   
   Main Overshoot Day Media contact at Global Footprint Network: Brooking Gatewood
   510 839 8879 x 102
   314 550 6559 (cell, anytime)
   
   Global Footprint Network interview contact:
   Justin Kitzes
   510-839-8879 x 101

2. See www.footprintnetwork.org/overshoot for more technical information as well as a visual representation of overshoot. A detailed explanation of the Ecological Footprint and the most recent set of global footprint accounts can be found at: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/
3. Global Footprint Network supports the shift towards a sustainable economy by advancing the Ecological Footprint, a measurement and management tool that makes the reality of planetary limits central to decision-making everywhere.
4. GPI Atlantic is an independent, non-profit research and education organization based in Nova Scotia committed to the development of the Genuine Progress Index (GPI) – a new measure of sustainability, wellbeing and quality of life. In particular, see our Ecological Footprint reports.
5. World Overshoot Day was devised by GFN partner, New Economics Foundation, as an innovative way to present the global ecological overshoot and first applied in The UK Interdependence Report (2006).